


Two Kids Fight the Entire Concept of Summer

by carolc24



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Chara doesn't know how smoothies work, Fluff mostly with some angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self Harm, Post-Pacifist, Recovery, angry knitting, kids being kids, summertime, the kids get dunked but in a good way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 08:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9990449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolc24/pseuds/carolc24
Summary: Frisk and Chara spend a summer day together while everyone else goes swimming.  Recovery is hard.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Undertale Secret Santa last month, and I figured I may as well post it. Shockingly it isn't about Papyrus.

Summer sucks. Chara doesn’t see why humans don’t abolish it already.

Most of their friends don’t mind the heat. They seem to enjoy it, in fact, because unlike in the Underground, the heat provided an excuse to make day trips to the beach. Even Undyne, who swore she’d never like the summer. Especially Undyne. She loves swimming and wearing swimsuits and seeing Alphys in a swimsuit and throwing sand at Papyrus.

So Undyne, Alphys, Toriel, Papyrus, Flowey, and Sans had gone to the beach nearly every other day all summer. Chara and Frisk joined them the first time, and then decided they didn’t want to deal with that again, so they would stay home instead.

Toriel didn’t like the idea at first. “Will you be all right on your own?”, she had asked, in a tone that clearly implied her fear of Chara doing something “dangerous” if left to their own devices. 

“Don’t worry,” they had responded. “Frisk will babysit me.” 

So the two of them are allowed to stay home, provided they text Toriel every hour to let her know they were safe. She would text them pictures of everyone having fun on the beach. Alphys playing video games and blushing when Undyne kisses her cheek. Papyrus and Sans buried in sand, his head poking out next to Flowey. Toriel wearing sunglasses and examining seashells she’d found.

It was comforting. It was isolating. It made them want to hide in their room and never speak to any of them again, so they could keep being happy and free and unburdened. 

After the third outing, Frisk and Chara agreed that it wouldn’t do to spend the whole day sleeping. They needed to do something together, something that made both of them happy. So they could feel like real people, and not like ghosts. Chara had enough of that feeling for a lifetime, and Frisk didn’t enjoy it either. 

As soon as the car leaves the driveway, Frisk pulls off their jacket, their face flushed. Their skin always looks bright pink at first, making the white scars stand out more than usual. They’d never let anyone else see them like that, but Chara can tell there’s a part of them that likes their appearance. They like to look in a mirror and pose dramatically when they think Chara isn’t looking. 

Chara would like to take a picture of the two of them together with their scars clearly exposed, maybe flipping off the camera, but the idea of someone seeing the picture was too intimidating. Still, maybe it would be fun to take the picture and then destroy it. They’d have to ask Frisk at some point.

Maybe it was cowardly to act like this, hiding themself away and only wearing short sleeves when Frisk is around. But the idea of anyone else seeing them like this was terrifying. There were too many risks. What if people talked about them behind their back? What if people pitied them? What if people made fun of them, insulted them? They already look too much like a demon out of hell, as far as they’re concerned. Which Frisk loves, but no one else seems to care for the “demon out of hell” aesthetic. 

“So, what do you want to do?” they ask. Frisk grimaces and strokes their fingers across their left arm, a sign invented by Frisk that loosely translates to “I want Undyne to throw me into space so that my internal organs will be sucked out of my body and the resulting mass of flesh will freeze solid and future astronauts will be haunted by the sight of my corpse forever.”

Chara considers this for a moment, and comes up with an idea. 

They don’t actually know how to make smoothies. They’ve watched Toriel make protein shakes for Papyrus and Undyne before, but they didn’t pay very much attention. Frisk decides to find the ingredients, while Chara prepares the blender. Frisk doesn’t like being around blades, and Chara doesn’t mind blades as long as Frisk is around, so it works out well.

Cooking is the perfect sort of activity for these days. It’s creation, instead of destruction. It involves skill, trial and error, teamwork, and sometimes punching things. Neither of them are very good at it, but that’s beside the point. It’s about the cooking, not the food.

The smoothie mixture is a combination of strawberries, yogurt, leftover noodles, snails, potato chips, a spoonful of baker’s chocolate, and ice (“There needs to be ice in it, so that it’s nice and cold!”, Chara says). The blender’s lid isn’t attached as tightly as they thought it was. They taste the smoothie remnants and decide it’s okay-tasting before wiping up the majority of the batch off the walls and floors. There’s chocolate on Frisk’s shirt, which they call a fashion statement when Chara points it out. No one but Chara will see it anyway; Frisk will put the sweater back on before their friends come home.

There’s still time before everyone else comes home, and Chara is jittery with a nervous energy. This type of feeling makes them want to do something reckless. Frisk must read it on their face, because they’re off again, signing to Chara that they have another idea.

Frisk gets a plastic bucket and fills it with water from the backyard hose. They have a mischievous gleam in their eye as they gesture to Chara, and then to the bucket. When Chara doesn’t move, Frisk kneels down and dunks their head in the water. Chara almost panics before Frisk resurfaces and shakes the water out of their hair, spraying Chara in the face. Feels good, they sign.

Not to be outdone, Chara blows bubbles out of their mouth for twenty seconds, then stands up and lets the water run down their back. Frisk ups the ante by standing in the bucket, socks and all, and Chara picks the bucket up and dumps the water over their head. Or they try, but the bucket is so heavy, they end up spilling it on themself and Frisk, who laughs and tackles Chara to the grass. 

They lie on the ground for a while, watching the clouds drift by and feeling the heat dry their clothes. Chara feels better than they’ve felt all day, and thinks that this is far better than the beach, but that thought, the image of the world going on without them as if they didn’t mean anything to anyone, dampens the mood. 

The water doesn’t feel as good anymore, and 

they can nearly feel their skin itching. 

Just barely.

But they don’t move until Frisk gets up, following them upstairs without saying a word. The rest of the afternoon is spent in their room in dry clothes. Chara is still bouncy with energy, so they find the loudest, angriest music on their phone and play it. They’ve mastered the art of angry knitting by now. Frisk doodles, having mastered the art of angry doodling, and occasionally tears pages out of their book and rips them into pieces. Even vent art is too exposing to chance Toriel seeing it. But they show it to Chara, and they take pride in it, and it makes Chara’s heart swell. 

Their friends find them like this when they get home. They’re full of happiness and camaraderie, laughing when they hear Chara’s retelling of the smoothie incident (Papyrus writes the recipe down for future reference).

The evening involves a lot of socializing, and dancing around the truth, and snail pie for dinner, and watching a TV show Chara doesn’t understand.

When everyone else has gone to bed, Chara and Frisk lie next to each other, quiet. Frisk is more despondent than usual, despite their earlier good mood. 

It hurts to see them like this, but Chara understands. Sometimes moods shift around when it seems like they shouldn’t. It’s a feeling Chara has experienced many times.

Sometimes, it’s nice for other people to see you. Neither of their scars are exposed now, but the two of them can see each other clearly, just like when they first met all those timelines ago. It was frightening then, but now it feels natural, like their souls are extensions of each other instead of separate units. And it’s freeing, so freeing when Frisk sees Chara for real. It makes them feel so.... alive.

Thy fall asleep next to Frisk, and sleep all the way through the night.


End file.
